false thoughts and conceits, let us remember that we
ought not so much to wonder that he admitted any, as that they were not
more. Dryden's earlier poems are infinitely more vitiated in this
respect.

Warton's observations are very just, but he does not seem sufficiently
to discriminate between the softness of individual lines, which is the
chief merit of these Pastorals, and the general harmony of poetic
numbers. Let it, however, be always remembered, that Pope gave the first
idea of mellifluence, and produced a softer and sweeter cadence than
before belonged to the English couplet. Dr. Johnson thinks it will be in
vain, after Pope, to endeavour to improve the English versification, and
that it is now carried to the _ne plus ultra_ of excellence.[8] This is
an opinion the validity of which I must be permitted to doubt. Pope
certainly gave a more correct and finished tone to the English
versification, but he sometimes wanted a variety of pause, and his nice
precision of every line prevented, in a few instances, a more musical
flow of modulated passages. But we are to consider what he did, not what
might be done, and surely there cannot be two opinions respecting his
improvement of the couplet though it does not follow that his general
rhythm has no imperfection. Johnson seems to have depreciated, or to
have been ignorant of, the metrical powers of some writers prior to
Pope. His ear seems to have been caught chiefly by Dryden, and as Pope's
versification was more equably (couplet with couplet being considered,
not passage with passage) connected than Dryden's, he thought therefore
that nothing could be added to Pope's versification. I should think it
the extreme of arrogance and folly to make my own ear the criterion of
music; but I cannot help thinking that Dryden, and of later days,
Cowper, are much more harmonious in their general versification than
Pope. I ought also to mention a neglected poem, not neglected on account
of its versification, but on account of its title and subject--Prior's
Solomon. Whoever candidly compares these writers together, unless his
ear be habituated to a certain recurrence of pauses precisely at the
end of a line, will not (though he will give the highest praise for
compactness, skill, precision, and force, to the undivided couplets of
Pope, separately considered)--will not, I think, assent to the position,
that in versification "what he found brickwork he left marble." I am not
afraid to